The citizen-soldier, discipline, and the peril of domestic deployment

“ In a general acceptation of the term, a citizen soldier signifies any man who is armed for the support and vindication of his country’s rights.
A Brother Soldier. A term of affection which is commonly used in the British service by one who serves under the same banners, and fights for the same cause with another. In a more extensive signification, it means any military man with respect to another. ”

“ Throughout our Nation's history, Americans from all walks of life have made tremendous sacrifices in defense of our freedom. Today, more than one million citizen soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and coastguardsmen continue this proud legacy as members of the National Guard and Reserve. During National Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve Week, we express our gratitude to the employers and communities who support those brave men and women. ”

“ Next to the forming of troops, military discipline is the first object that presents itself to our notice: it is the soul of all armies; and unless it be established amongst them with great prudence, and supported with unshaken resolution, soldiers become a contemptible rabble, and are more dangerous to the very state that maintains them, than even its declared enemies. See Discipline.
Military execution, the ravaging or destroying of a country or town that refuses to pay the contribution inflicted upon them. Also the punishment inflicted by the sentence of a court-martial. ”

“ He objected to laissez-aller in any branch of the army. Discipline was as important as guns and ammunition, he thought. Nor did he mean mere respect for established things or strict obedience to superiors. He meant that discipline of the mind which accepted principles and policies—the unity of military doctrine; he meant a constant training of officers in grand manoeuvres, that each might be accustomed to responsibility in the common scheme. Only by incessant practice could one attain perfection. And behind the discipline there must be patriotism. ”

“ Discussions by officers and soldiers concerning public measures determined upon and declared by the Government, when carried at all beyond temperate and respectful expressions of opinion, tend greatly to impair and destroy the discipline and efficiency of troops, by substituting the spirit of political faction for that firm, steady, and earnest support of the authorities of the Government, which is the highest duty of the American soldier. ”

“ They have destroyed the principle of obedience in the great, essential, critical link between the officer and the soldier, just where the chain of military subordination commences, and on which the whole of that system, depends. The soldier is told he is a citizen, and has the rights of man and citizen. The right of a man, he is told, is, to be his own governor, and to be ruled only by those to whom he delegates that self-government. ”

“ The approval process for the deployment of the DC National Guard is unique, unlike any of the 50 States or three territories across the country where ultimate authority rests in the hands of the governor. [1] In the nation’s capital, where no governorship exists, the Guard is ultimately under the command of the President of the United States when acting in its militia capacity to support civil authorities. ”

“ The ordered or cadenced March.—The prescribed movements in military tactics. All military movements are intended to be made with the greatest quickness consistent with order, regularity, and without hurry or fatigue to the troops. The uniformity of position, and the cadence and length of step, produce that equality and freedom of march, on which every thing depends, and to which the soldier must be carefully trained, nor suffered to join the battalion, until he be thoroughly perfected in this most essential duty. Many different times of march must not be required of the soldier. ”

“ But in this respect also, the Governments, knowing that their chief power is in the army, have so organised its mobilisation and its discipline that no propaganda amongst the people can snatch the army out of the hands of the Government. No man, whatever his political convictions, who is serving in the army, and has been subjected to that hypnotic breaking-in which is called discipline, can, whilst in the ranks, avoid obeying commands, just as an eye cannot avoid winking when a blow is aimed at it. ”

“ The soldier is broken in to military discipline, as it were, before he enters the army; or rather, military discipline is nothing but an enhancement of social servitude. In aristocratic armies the soldier will soon become insensible to everything but the orders of his superior officers; he acts without reflection, triumphs without enthusiasm, and dies without complaint: in this state he is no longer a man, but he is still a most formidable animal trained for war. ”

“ Employer support for the National Guard and Reserve is important to our ability to sustain an all-volunteer force. Employers play a vital role in easing the transitions our national guardsmen and reservists must make from civilian life to military service and back again. Whether they are participating in weekend training in support of readiness or deploying in response to a crisis at home and abroad, our national guardsmen and reservists are more effective when they have the support of civilian employers. ”

“ Our Nation salutes our employers and business leaders who, often at their own expense, back their employees who serve in the National Guard and Reserve. As President, I will continue to focus on providing our men and women in uniform and their families with access to the services, benefits, and care they so deserve. I encourage all Americans to join with our employers in facilitating the service our national guardsmen and reservists provide to our Nation and honoring the sacrifices they make in defense of our security. ”

“ But to separate the arts which form the citizen and the statesman, the arts of policy and war, is an attempt to dismember the human character, and to destroy those very arts we mean to improve. By this separation, we in effect deprive a free people of what is necessary to their safety; or we prepare a defence against invasions from abroad, which gives a prospect of usurpation, and threatens the establishment of military government at home. ”

“ When a people is accustomed to arms, it is, difficult for a part to subdue the whole; or before the establishment of disciplined armies, it is difficult for any usurper to govern the many by the help of a few. These difficulties, however, the policy of civilized and commercial nations has sometimes removed; and by forming a distinction between civil and military professions, by committing the keeping and the enjoyment of liberty to different hands, has prepared the way for the dangerous alliance of faction with military power, in opposition to mere political forms and the rights of mankind. ”

“ THE ARMY.—At about this time a great change took place in the constitution of the army. The occupation of a soldier had become a trade. Besides the levy of citizens, there was established a recruiting system, which drew into the ranks the idle and lazy, and a system of re-inforcements, by which cavalry and light-armed troops were taken from subject and vassal states. Thus there arose a military class, distinct, as it had not been of old, from the civil orders, and ready to act separately when its own interest or the ambition of favorite leaders might prompt. ”

“ The boy is father to the man. The present is the mold in which the future is cast. The dominant characteristics of the cadet are seen in the future general. You have learned here how to command, and a still more useful lesson, how to obey. You have been taught obedience to the civil, as well as to the military, code, for in this land the military is always subordinate to the civil law. Not the least valuable part of your education is your service in the cadet ranks, performing the duties of a private soldier. ”

“ The principle upon which and the object for which armies shall be employed in suppressing rebellion, must be determined and declared by the civil authorities, and the Chief Executive, who is charged with the administration of the national affairs, is the proper and only source through which the needs and orders of the Government can be made known to the armies of the nation. ”

“ Today, I’m announcing several critical actions that my administration has taken to confront a problem that we have right here at home. We fight wars that are 6,000 miles away; wars that we should have never been in, in many cases. But we don’t control our own border.
So we’re going to confront the national security crisis on our southern border. And we’re going to do it one way or the other — we have to do it — not because it was a campaign promise, which it is. It was one of many, by the way; not my only one. We’re rebuilding the military, our economy is thriving like never before. ”

“ China is coming here next week, by the way. They're coming home, the traders. And then China is coming here next week. And then I'll be meeting with President Xi at some point after that to maybe — for some remaining deals. We'll make them directly, one-one-one, ourselves.
So, we're going to be signing today, and registering, national emergency. And it's a great thing to do because we have an invasion of drugs, invasion of gangs, invasion of people, and it's unacceptable. ”

“ Others have gotten through. And, in Tijuana, you have a lot of people staying there. If we didn’t have the wall up, and if we didn’t have the wall secured and strengthened, they would have walked right through; they’d be welcomed to the United States.
One of the things we’d save tremendous — just a tremendous amount on would be sending the military. If we had a wall, we don’t need the military because we’d have a wall.
So I’m going to be signing a national emergency. ”

“ He declared that the provost-marshals for the congressional districts were intended to restrict the liberties of the people; that courts-martial had already usurped power to try citizens contrary to law; that he himself would never submit to the orders of a military dictator, and such were Burnside and his subordinates; that if those in authority were allowed to accomplish their purposes, the people would be deprived of their liberties and a monarchy established. ”

“ In the three different locations where the Guard was stationed as the Capitol was being breached, all servicemembers had access to full civil disturbance gear right there with them.
Outside of the QRF, which had recently returned from two days of training together, there is debate as to how ready the rest of the Guard was to engage in civil disturbance response on January 6th. The notion that the military is not primed or naturally skilled to deal with civil disturbance appears to stand in tension with National Guard traditions, training, and doctrine. ”

“ A discipline is invented to inure the soldier to perform, from habit, and from the fear of punishment, those hazardous duties, which the love of the public, or a national spirit, no longer inspire.
When we consider the breach that such an establishment makes in the system of national virtues, it is unpleasant to observe, that most nations who have run the career of civil arts, have, in some degree, adopted this measure. ”

“ They are the duties which most closely concern the subordinate relation of the military to the civil power in a republic. In that relation I had the great good fortune to enjoy most cordial and considerate personal treatment on the part of my distinguished associates representing the civil power. Hence my advice to my young military friends may be fairly regarded as based upon the most favorable view of what any of them may reasonably expect. It is the one position of all in the army which most severely tries the spirit of subordination which is so indispensable in a soldier of a republic. ”

“ The rules of subordination and obedience in an army are so simple that everybody learns them with the utmost ease. But the relations between the army and its administrative head, and with the civil power, are by no means so simple. When a too confident soldier rubs up against them, he learns what "military" discipline really means. It sometimes takes a civilian to "teach a soldier his place" in the government of a republic. If a soldier desires that his own better judgment shall control military policy, he must take care not to let it become known that the judgment is his. ”

“ That when the struggle is in the nature of a revolution, and so long as the attempted revolution is in active progress, no definite limits can be given to the 'theatre of operations,' but the administration must be regarded as possessing a limited discretionary power in the use of martial law." As to the practical application of this power, "the presumptions are always in favor of the established civil law of the land, whenever and wherever it has a reasonable chance of unobstructed operation. ”

“ The rulers of states cannot desire disarmament, for such a movement would render their position difficult and precarious and would take an admirable tool of empire out of their hands. For armed nations meekly submit to government. Military discipline shapes them to obedience, and in a nation so disciplined, neither insurrections, nor riots, nor tumults of any kind need be feared. When military service is obligatory upon all, when all the citizens either are, or have been,24 soldiers, then all the forces of social life are so calculated as to support power, or even the lack of it. ”